I usually skip right past these kinds of things, but I like movies. Now, anyone who knows me, is this accurate?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Letters to the Editor

• Bush was sold a bill of goods
  
  . . .
  
  Bush was sold a bill of goods by charlatan mid-east banker Ahmed Chalibi. According to John Wizard of Salon.com magazine, Chalibi promised Bush that he knew exactly where Saddam had hidden Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
  
  In 2002, Chalibi, together with then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, claimed that they knew “exactly” where Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction could be found. Now the whole world knows that was a lie.
  
  Bush bought into that promise, but this letter writer was never sold, primarily, because actual knowledge of the exact locations of the alleged Iraq weapons of mass destruction by any U.S. ally would logically have been shared with U.N. weapons inspectors.
  
  . . .

Gee, now how'd that happen?

I intended to blog this 'how to' article elsewhere, but it seems unkind to do it in that public of a place.  Still, I have to write about it because I know about the article, because it's poorly written and I can't leave it in complete anonymous peace, and because it's at an education website. 

As a retired homeschooler, I know how proper one's writing ought to be if one is placing oneself in a position of educational authority.  Education writers, and homeschooling writers, ought to double check all their i-dotting and t-crossing before going public, and site editors should to do the same thing.  If the mechanics of the writing aren't in order it's difficult for readers to understand the point of the piece, and even harder for someone with a differing opinion to easily take issue with it.  And that's my problem, the poor writing in the article is so distracting, I can't grapple with the recommendations put forth by the author.

Education writers don't have to be perfect, but the level of writing should at least be that of a well-educated high school senior.

Site first:  DHMO.org

Then the article about it:  Professor makes a point about critical thinking

• Tom Way wants everybody to know that inhaling dihydrogen monoxide can kill you.
  He is absolutely certain that it also contributes to acid rain, the erosion of farmland, global warming and is the primary chemical behind rust.
  .  . .
  Way's facts won't be challenged by the scientific community because anybody who has ever studied the periodic table of elements should realize that dihydrogen monoxide is simply a long-winded way of writing  . . .(no spoiler here)

Read the site carefully, first, then read the article to see if you're conclusion is correct.

Chris O'Donnell linked to another blog page, Rabidkitten's Journal the author of which is advocating a tax break for homeschooling families.  The gist of the pro-tax break post (as I read it) is:

• homeschooling costs money, and we can all do with a bit more of the folding-green
• teachers get tax breaks on their teaching expenses
• homeschooled kids outperform publicly-schooled kids
• the US is falling behind in the quality of the home-grown people entering the science and engineering fields
• American educational expectations are too low

I'm assuming the train of thought is:  American public schools aren't able to fulfill their obligation to produce well-educated citizens, whereas homeschooling has a proven track record.  Since homeschooling produces higher quality citizens, then homeschooling ought to be subsidized just as the public school teachers are.

The problem with subsidizing homeschooling, is that any time you take money 'from' the government (until it's 'gone' it's yours; after it's 'gone' it's 'theirs') the government wants to know the Who (can benefit), What (exactly is homeschooling), When (do they do it), Where (do they do it), How (do they do it), and Why (do they do it) of the tax-break area under consideration.

• The Who, What, How and Why almost come under the same heading, and to gain a tax break (one wonders if this would be state or federal), Someone would have to tot up some parameters so that school dropouts wouldn't all of a sudden claim they were homeschooling merely to get a few bucks shaved off the yearly tax bill. 
  
• When is subjective, but there have been some arguments about it (in some places, children were seen as truant if they weren't being educated during 'normal' school hours). 
  
• Where has also come up for debate (Missouri's law stipulates that X-number of hours out of the yearly grand total be conducted at the usual-place of the children's homeschooling). 
  
• And Why?  Why, Why may be the most contentious of all if the money is either denied to, or taken from, the government, given that religious reasons for homeschooling are not unknown.

-------------------

In replies to the comments about the objections to tax-breaks-for-homeschoolers, some commentators say that those who don't want to follow the rules don't have to take the break so that they don't have to comply with the rules.  But with government it doesn't work that way.  Once one bureaucratic section of a government boxes in a population, the other sections go along with the precedent.  If the Tax Man says X, the Education Man will probably agree. I've seen this in helping my mother file her medical claims:  she has insurance both through Medicare and the military's Tricare for Life.  We found out the hard way that if Medicare disallows a payment, Tricare also disallows a payment -- there is no governmental 'second payer' if the governmental 'first payer' brushes aside the claim.  Her doctor's office didn't check to see if an MRI would be covered and, as my mom had never had a disallowed procedure, she assumed the doctor's office knew what it was doing.  The lesson cost her nearly $2,000 on a fixed income.

If homeschooling is defined for one group within a geographic area, it is often defined for all groups within a geographic area (since education in the US is overseeen geographically).

-------------------

Another commentator compared homeschooling to a home business, but the comparison isn't equal.  Home businesses are not compulsory; education of minor children is:  the little darlings have to go somewhere. 

For homeschooling to be comparable to homebusinessing, families who homeschool would have to abide by zoning regulations, homeschooling licenses, and registration with various levels of government.  If the parameters were enacted on one group (the tax-breakers), the likelihood would be that they would be enacted on all.  The paperwork, oversight and control at such a level would hamper the academic freedom homeschoolers now enjoy.

-------------------

Yet a third comment (by the blog author) is the copy of information about how homeschoolers are taxed twice.  This is not a new situation as families whose children attend private schools have put up with this for decades.  Then there are those of us who are childless, either because we have no children, or they are grown.  One point of public education is that the Public pays for the education -- all of the public.  Whether we like them or not, public schools are the only choice for some children and there is, as yet, no alternative.  If we are to change to a completely private system as some people advocate, there will have to be major changes in the system (which are too far-reaching to talk about here).  For a public system to be a public system, the Public must support it.

-------------------

Then there is (at the moment) the final complaint that a 'personal blog' has been linked to.  The person's blog may be 'personal' (as is this very one here), but the subject matter of the post isn't 'personal.'  If the changes advocated in the post were made, there is the potential for those changes to affect many people.  If authors are unwilling to have 'personal' blogs linked, then the subject-matter of the blog should remain personal.

Milestone on hard road:

• Nicholas Gallant's home-school teacher held his ankles, and picked up and put down each Adidas-laced foot.
  
  Nicholas smiled and shook his right hand.
  
  He responds to music and sounds, his mother said. Every weekday, the teacher brings toys that give him the sensory stimulus he needs.
  
  Nicholas has cerebral palsy. He doesn't speak, is in a wheelchair and eats most of his meals through a feeding tube.
  
  Two years ago, Nicholas left Miller because he repeatedly contracted illnesses from other students; a small cold often turned grave for him. He has been home-schooled by a teacher who is paid by the district, but attended the school's prom, senior breakfast and last month's commencement ceremony.
   

I'm glad that these kids are getting an education and that adjustments are being made for them so that they can get the most out of the experience, this is a good thing.  But this isn't homeschooling, or home-schooling, or even home schooling.  This is home-bound schooling.  There is a difference. 

Home-bound education is a public school service.  Homeschooling is a form of private education.

I don't say this to be snobbish, or elitist, only to work to keep the concept of homeschooling from being changed, either with intent or through ignorance.

• at being assumed to be of a particular religious flavor just because I'm associated with homeschooling
• about how I must approach my children's academic instruction
• at being preached at from my own inbox by people I've never heard of
• at being "instructed" by strangers to do something
• concerning the assumption, despite my having a website specifically about homeschooling (from which my email address must have been harvested), that I haven't a clue as to why I homeschooled, and what homeschooling must do, and where all education begins
• at being informed of the purpose of my homeschooling
• upon reading the circular reasoning that because a source declares itself to be true, then it follows that what is quoted from that source is true.

Greetings from [nope, still no link],

Re: [nope, no ad either] - The Most Accurate Bible ever produced.

Homeschooling must focus upon the Lord God, who He is, what He has said, and what He has done. You are instructed to "... bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4), not of the world or of mere men, but "of the Lord." If you agree with this statement then the above Bible is the Bible for you and yours.

Home-schooled children are protected from the immorality and falsehoods learned in the public schools. You are able to teach your children and grandchildren the Bible and lead them in Godly paths. The Scripture is our wholly sufficient guide for what to believe and how to live in ways that please God AND THAT IS THE REAL REASON TO HOME-SCHOOL. 

" ¹⁰⁵Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. ¹⁰⁶¶ I have sworn and I rise to it, to keep Your righteous judgments."  (Psalms 119:105, 106-[their name again]). You must allow God's Word to light the world in your daily walk so that it glorifies God. The Bible illuminates the world so that we might see it from God's view. This means that we must use the Bible when viewing everything in the world and in life.

You must approach your academic instruction, in the same God centered manner, teaching about the world in a Biblical manner along your daily walk with God. You must disciple your children daily. All education must begin with the Bible itself which shows His mighty works of creation and redemption. Language, law, music, history, science, math, art, geography, or any other subject, are also a study of the works of God because guides man, man's history and created the world and everything in it. The Bible should penetrate every area of study.

This is why we publish the [title I won't print]. The Bible you rely upon to guide you in instructing your charges must be accurate in every sense of the Word. The [name of their book again] is just that. The [title I won't print] is a word for word literal translation taken directly from the same Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. No words have been added or subtracted.

This new Bible is an exact literal, word-for-word translation of the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Greek Received Text (Textus Receptus), the main texts used by the Authorised/King James Version translators. Certainly you will want to know all the truths that God has written in the original Hebrew and Greek languages, for it is truth that has the power to set you free: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) 

A true Bible must contain the words of God, all of His words, and no words added from the minds of men (such as paraphrases, synonyms, mistranslations, biases, interpretations, etc.). For this reason every person that loves God and His Word will use this [title I won't print]  (why would you want to use a Bible that has thousands of God’s words hidden from you? Or how can you trust a version that mistranslates thousands of words that God has written for you?). Only God can write Scripture. All those mistranslations are violating God’s express commands not to add a word to His words. God calls those who add words to his words “liar” because they are adding the words to His words and misleading the reader into believing that those words are God’s words. “Do not add to His words, that He not reprove you, and you be proven to be a liar” (Proverbs 30:6)

In the Bible, we have everything we need for spiritual, moral and academic instruction in life. 

The Teachers:  The Bible places the educational responsibility of your children on you, the parents, who are assigned the role of teaching their own children. The primary responsibility rests on the father. God said of Abraham, " ¹⁹For I have known him, so that whatever he may command his sons and his house after him, even they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice; to the intent that Jehovah may bring on Abraham that which He has spoken of him." (Genesis 18:19-[from their translation]). Paul says, " ⁴And fathers, do not provoke to anger your children, but nurture them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4-[their translation again -- which may be just fine, but it gets tiresome reading them quoting from themselves]). 

Obviously, the wife should also teach the children. " ⁸My son, hear your father’s instruction, and do not forsake the law of your mother;" (Proverbs 1:8; Proverbs 6:20-[their translation; itsn't a wonderful thing that the Bible's copyright seems to have expired] ). Also the grandparents are to share in the teaching: "... And you shall make them known to your sons, and to your sons’ sons." (Deuteronomy 4:9). 

How to Teach: In Deuteronomy 6:7-9-[dropping that name again], it says, " ⁷And you shall teach them to your sons, and shall speak of them as you sit in your house, and as you walk in the way, and as you are lying down, and as you are rising up." This means that you are commanded to teach your children at home, away from home and at all times. You are to be constant companions of your children living your life filled with a love for God from your whole heart and from your children's hearts. The purpose of your home-schooling is to have a Biblical view of truth and life in your daily walk with God and with your charges. " ⁵They are of the world; because of this, as from the world they speak, and the world hears them. ⁶We are of God; the one knowing God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." (1 John 1:5,6-[another textual sales pitch]) You are keep His commandments in your heart and the heart of your children. You are closest to your children and your close personal walk with Christ will carry on in your children.

Surely you will want to get the most accurate Bible which is the [as if we don't know the name by now]. To do this click on the link below. [so that you can buy something from these sincere people].

Order a copy of [what they're selling] for your review and save 50% off the retail price.  Your complete satisfaction is guaranteed and we will cheerfully refund your purchase and shipping costs if you are not completely satisfied after reviewing this Bible.

Sales@ [it's not here either]

Another email arrived in the old inbox, and again, I checked it out.  I've got so gun-shy about emails that (despite the alleged 'freedom of information' on the Internet) typing in the Snopes URL is almost a reflex.  'Factual emails' = immediate search.  Information is now so free that each one of us is free to make up whatever we like.

On that email list of school alumni I'm a bit of a wet blanket because I'm forever Snopsing emails and ruining the fun.  I guess that's why they never used to invite me to parties.  Sometimes an enquiring mind is a curse.

As I posted below under "At least I'm a round peg, here," it makes as much sense to me to consider the Middle Eastern creation story as science as it does to consider the Old Norse creation story.  (the Biblical version of creation follows the order from the earlier Mesopotamian Enuma Elish)  Now we get some upstart wanting to include his story in the Kansas public school science curriculum and divvy up the time 1/3 for evolution, 1/3 for Genesis, and 1/3 for Spaghetti Monsterism.  If Spaghetti Monsterism gets time, I think it only fair to include the Norse version, too.  One quarter of the time for everyone.

You got another creator's intelligently designed story you want included?  Take a number.

Yesterday I had an NPR "driveway moment," but rather than being in my driveway, I was on a small side street.  Luckily for me, there was no traffic. Still, I couldn't stop listening to the report on the Supreme Court's latest decision concerning eminent domain.

• Development Trumps Property, Says High Court
  
  All Things Considered, June 23, 2005 · A divided Supreme Court rules that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for economic development. The 5-4 decision was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes were due to be demolished to make way for an office complex.

Our community saw this happen when a national home improvement store bought a parcel of property from a couple disposing of the next portion of their farm.  According to news reports, the couple's homestead, a gracious old farm home that they decorate each holiday, was to be exempt from any part of the purchase.  After the purchase went through, the home improvement store went to the city to see if they could force the inclusion of the couple's homestead through eminent domain because the home sat where the company store wanted its driveway. 

When this news was reported in the local paper, the people in the surrounding communities rose up to provide support for the couple.  I tried going to the town hall meeting, but not only was the city hall parking lot filled, so were all the surrounding parking lots.  I would have had to trek across a field in the October darkness, and then have to stand outside with the others I could see surrounding the city hall.  Rather than do myself a mischief in the field and have to be rescued after what would probably have been an uncomfortable interval, I drove home. 

The couple, and we who enjoy seeing their homestead, managed to hold sway and, as of this writing, their house is still a home.

I don't think the outcome would be the same now the Supreme Court has ruled the way it has done.

For whatever it's worth, I maintain that the citizen does not exist for the benefit of the government, but rather the other way around.  It seems, though, that more and more the citizen isn't much more than a cipher.

From Public Use To Corporate Abuse

Eminent domain exploited by government / corporate partnerships 

Thanks to whoever updated the Wikipedia entry to reflect the Supreme Court's action.

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion  Youth Risk Behavior Study

Can there be moderation when bureaucracies assume social, as well as academic, responsibility for growing children?  I know that researchers can only do their work when they have something with which to work, but the shotgun approach of surveying children in school seems to me to betray those children to bureaucratic needs.  Children who might not otherwise have thought or worried about behaviors such as suicide will now have those concerns thrust upon them.

·         During the past 12 months, how many times did you actually attempt suicide?

0 times
1 time
2 or 3 times
4 or 5 times
6 or more times

I've completed a few surveys during my life, but I've got to the point that I now avoid them because I think that someone's wanting to know something is their concern, not mine.  For me all this is voluntary, but in a school situation I think cooperation may, to some degree, be coerced because the surveys are conducted in schools.

Methodology of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System

• page 8:  Surveys are conducted by state and local education agencies or by state health departments, often with the assistance of survey contractors.

The mere fact of living in a country and being a citizen does not make one fodder for government researchers.

..................................................................................................................................................

Specialty camps help kids broaden interests, hone skills

·         The Kansas City, Kan., 11-year-old is so booked up he says he’ll have to “make time to have some fun.”

I liked camp when I was a youngster.  I went two or three times in two or three years -- forty years later it all runs together.  I also enjoyed the summer youth programs of my early adolescence, but those, like the camp I went to, lasted only for a few weeks.  Today it seems as if there are camps for every week of the summer.  When do many American children have any time to be youngsters? 

I was surprised when we returned to America in the summer 1999 -- there were few, if any, children playing outside.  Granted it gets fairly warm during the middle of the day in July and August in the midwest, but I remember playing outside in South Dakota summers -- I grant that we didn't have air conditioning at the time, so the Great Indoors wasn't as cooly attractive as it is now.  But still, after our family's decades in Europe, I wondered where all the American children had gone.  A short time later I saw kids riding on bicycles in queues with young adults, ahead of and behind them, on their own bikes.  The kids appeared to have been farmed out to youth groups, summer school and camps all summer long.  I wonder if they all have appointment books or PDAs to keep their schedules straight.

..................................................................................................................................................

At least I'm a round peg here (I'm vote #125):

The idea of pitting scientific theories about the progression of life on earth against what appears to be a thinly disguised version of biblical creation known as intelligent design, is about as reasonable as trying to fit Ginnungagap into the discussion, unless, of course, the subject in question is world religions.  After a quick refresher on Norse creation it seems that there are about as many literary parallels between Norse creation story and evolution as there are between the Middle Eastern creation stories (which includes the Hebrew version) and evolution.

Creation stories were how pre-scientific peoples described their understanding of how things came to be.  Each people felt its story was the story.  Science attempts to take objective fact and fashion a theory of how things happened from the facts we have so far collected.  Have there been scientific suppressions?  Of course.  Have there been scientific 'political' machinations?  Yes.  Have there been mistaken conjectures?  Undoubtedly.  But, in the end, the objective facts, for the most part, rise to the surface.  Science is what works regardless of your religious outlook.  You plug in an electrical appliance, and it hums, buzzes, heats, or moves, depending on its function.  Airplanes fly over Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Pagan peoples alike, and those peoples all fly on those airplanes.  If a Muslim pours vinegar on baking soda it fizzes, as it would for anyone.  Science works regardless.

Religions have had to discard their traditional views of how the world came to be.  Those in charge of the pre-Reformation Christian Church (now the Roman Catholic church) resisted Galileo's assertions as to the earth's position in the sky, but their successors couldn't resist forever against objective observations and Earth was deposed as the physical center of the Christian Church's universe.  As objective observation accumulated, more and more of the pre-scientific assumptions had to be discarded. 

Now when we look at our collection of observations about our 'past lives,' whether an intelligent designer designed what we now see, no one can say.  A diety can neither be proven or disproven unless and until that diety incontrovertibly gives the entire planet an unambiguous Sign that Diety is tired of all the kvetching and THIS is the way it is (whatever THIS turns out to be).  Otherwise, all revelations have come through people and their artifacts.  Stories, prophecy, sacred books, and religious institutions have all come about through people and are applicable only to people.  The spectacle of hedgehogs gathering in the wild for religious services has not yet been observed.  All we can truly go on, when trying to divine the method of The Divine, is to look at the work of Diety that has not been translated by people:  nature.  All other conjectures are colored by passage through human works.

..................................................................................................................................................

Another person who admits that, "I’m not an expert on home schooling programs" does some 'thinking out loud' online.

Since I know a little bit about homeschooling, I'll have a go at doing my own online 'thinking out loud.'  I'll take the points item by item.  This isn't to 'pick on' this particular blogger (whose opinion only came to my attention today and about whom I know nothing), but to dispel some of the misconceptions about homeschooling.  This blogger's concerns seem to be average from what I've seen online about objections to homeschooling.

1. First off, homeschooling isn't about "programs."  It's may begin with parental worry about academic or social concerns, but for many people it soon turns into a way of life that we don't want to lose.
   
2. "The best argument in favor of home schooling is that parents would do a better job than the public school system. I was pretty skeptical that this was true, given their parents’ lack of real training, but to be fair I looked up the data. A study from the department of education reveals that there is no statistical difference between the performance of public and home schoolers. So the #1 reason that home schooling parents give to remove their children from the system turns out to be bunk. These parents are just as bad at teaching their children as the deeply flawed public system they are trying to rescue them from. There goes the major prop in the home schoolers’ argument."
   
   And some of us are just as good.  My three homeschooled children went to college (successfully), just like their older, publicly-schooled, brother. I know this is 'anedotal' but if you accumulate enough anecdotes, soon you wind up with a statistic. But it's immaterial whether my kids went to college or not, or whether my homeschooling friends' kids did so or not. What matters to me, is that my kids are happy.
   
   The argument, that we can teach children just as well as public school teachers, only grazes the surface of what it means to be homeschooling.  The entire family dynamic can change just from not having to continually recover from the unrelenting influence of peer groups and other peoples' agendas.  This doesn't mean that the kids are cloistered so that they are protected from all contact with their age-mates, only that the relative length of exposure is reduced, and that the kids have a change to find their balance in the greater scheme of things.
   
3. "Now one could argue that since there is no difference in the quality of educatioin, why not allow home schooling? Well, the fact that the #2, #4, and #5 reasons parents cite for keeping their children home have to do with religion and morality. And this is where I object to home schooling: it serves as a means of isolating children from contrary cultural influences, thus truncating a child’s experiences and narrowing his or her vision of the world."
   
   And just how much do you know about how we go about doing this, if we do it at all?  Is there a common definition of "morality?"  What if I'm concerned about "morality" but yet my view isn't synonymous with the conservative version of "morality?"  Does my version of kindness, compassion and concern still count against me?  Did my tack of comparative religious studies also count against me since I included "religion" in our studies?  And since when do you get an opinion about how I raised my children if I haven't broken any law or violated basic standards of conduct?  Would homeschool-criticizers take kindly to me voting on how they raise their children (if any)?
   
   As for "contrary cultural influences," even before I heard about homeschooling I wondered why the atmosphere of school seemed to have changed from when I was a child in the 1950s.  When I was in first grade we had one seriously dysfunctional kid about whom we all knew: Jeffrey G.  He got into trouble, he was unpopular with the rest of us (feared is more like it), and he'd slapped a teacher in the face.  Jeffrey was infamous.  Fast-forward to when my children were in school.  The Jeffrey G.s had multiplied.  Continue fast-forwarding to more recent times when large segments of the school population are drugged so they can manage to get through the day without becoming a Jeffrey G.  What changed from the 1950s to the present?  I have a theory that in the 1950s there were a greater number of stable homes, and children weren't having to raise themselves to the degree they have to nowadays.  Because of this larger, stable population, the would-have-been rotten apples were supported concerning socially acceptable behavior.  Peer pressure in other words.  Today, with the societal changes from the 1960s onward, those Miss Manners types of supports are no longer in place and the would-be-bad-apples are not as supported in their positive bahaviors and so, to use a now archaic phrase, they let it all hang out. 
   
   For all I know this is psycho-babble, but it's my psycho-babble and I acted on it.  What was the result of my acting on it?  Some of the problems within out family disappeared after the children were removed from school.  By "truncating" my children's experiences our lives together were improved.  This wasn't from a conservative religious viewpoint, or a parental control viewpoint, but rather a siblings-getting-along-with-each-other viewpoint.
   
   
4. That is a bad thing beyond the mere lack of breadth. First, home schoolers are overwhelming white.
   
   And now I have to apologize for being white.  And an "overwhelming" white at that.  Isn't that a little bit racist?  Homeschooling is open to anyone who wants to do it, just as hiking, flying kites, bowling,  buying cars, and eating rhubarb are.
   Muslim homeschool page
   Afrocentric Homeschoolers Association
   Chevra Jewish Homeschool List 
   Chinese homeschoolers
   Buddhist homeschoolers
   Hindu homeschooling
   
   Second, they are overwhelming conservative christian.
   
   See above.  My sympathies on this, as I've met some overwhelming conservative Christians, too.
   
   
   And third, they are more affluent. On the surface the data suggests that there is no income difference between home schoolers and public schoolers, but this is misleading. While the family incomes are the same, most home schoolers are from single income families. This means that the one breadwinner must be earning a ton of money.
   
   Or maybe we're just reeeeely thrifty?
   
   And what does this have to do with anything?  Shall we apply the same standard to golfers?  Or musicians?  Or chefs?  How does financial status play into whether or not pursuits in life are worthwhile?
   
   And by the way, since when is sufficiently providing for your family a bad thing?
   
   
   
5. So the heart of my objection to home schooling really amounts to a means for passing along one’s personal moral and religious doctrines to one’s child. This is fine as far as it goes, but what is NOT okay is to try to prevent that child from ever being exposed to contrary (and equally valid) forms of life. That is a recipe for artificially constricting a child’s horizons. It ultimately treats a child as an extension of the parent, as a thing.
   
   Oh, poppycock.  This is a recipe for trying to get one's kid to adulthood without him or her jumping off the Empire State Building in a fit of peer-induced bad behavior.
   
   And as for keeping "contrary" culture out of your childrens' lives, it ain't easy.  My kids all grew up in Germany as Army Brats. With the younger three, the ones who were homeschooled, we spent the bulk of their late childhood and early adolescence (and set a family record for living in one place) in a village outside of Heidelberg.  Our contact with American culture was through their friends (both publicly schooled and homeschooled), the local military community via sport and cultural activities provided by the youth center, church activities with the All Saints Episcopal congregation, and through reading the newspaper.  Otherwise, there was no American television, no American radio, no American malls, no American group-sports, no American ueber-culture.  And yet the kids grew up American.  Modern culture happens -- you can't (easily) keep it out, and, in my experience (which is, of course, limited) none of the homeschooling parents I knew cloistered their kids.
   
   
6. So while I concede that the educational performances are the same, and that there are enough mechanisms for socialization that that children will not be social misfits, I am deeply concerned that these kids are going to grow up in an affluent, lily white christian conservative world.
   
   You need to get out more in the online homeschool world. 
   
   
7. The purpose of education is supposed to be to educate. Not just to improve test scores, and certainly not to propagate conservative christianity or to create right wing shock troops. That is just no way to raise a child.
   
   Many of us not only didn't concern outselves with our kids' test scores, we didn't test.  Period.  And I don't think homeschoolers are the ones obsessed with testing.  Also, many of us don't "propagate" conservative Christianity.  And I can guarantee that of my four kids, there are no right wing shock troops.

And by the way, this is only my opinion.  If you ask other homeschoolers, you'll get other opinions.  Diversity, thy face is homeschooling.

FBI view: Terror war experience unneeded

• “You need leadership. You don’t need subject-matter expertise,” Bald testified in an ongoing FBI employment civil suit. “It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in a counterterrorism position.” 

This statement goes against what I saw in the Army during the 25+ years of my husband's career in intelligence.  CI-agents assigned to foreign areas often attended the Defense Language Institute for language and cultural training.  Counter-terrorism training was necessary, too, of course, but without an ability to understand local language or the peoples' points of view, an agent was hampered.  Those with training specific to the country in which they were assigned, either in person or at a distance, could more easily fulfill their duties.

Republican: Democrats demonize Christians

• The rhetorical warfare came as the House considered a proposal by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., to put Congress on record against "coercive and abusive religious proselytizing" at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

  Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., criticized Obey and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who offered a similar condemnation of academy officials earlier this year on another bill.

  "Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians," Hostettler said.
  
  . . .
  
  The Air Force is investigating numerous allegations of inappropriate actions by academy officials, including a professor who required cadets to pray before taking his test and a Protestant chaplain who warned anyone "not born again would burn in the fires of hell."
  
  . . .
  
  "If you tell Christians they can't tell others about their faith, then they can't exercise their Christian religion," Hostettler said later. He said proselytizing involves a forced conversion to Christianity, something that did not occur at the academy.

Again, this is counter to what I've seen in 50 years of militarily-affiliated life.  In all my years as an Air Force Brat, a WAC, and the wife of a soldier, I never once had a military chaplain force any religious behavior on me.  The chaplains I knew ministered to servicemembers and their families regardless of religious orientation.  The passages above read like science fiction to me.  Somebody changed the planet again while I wasn't looking.

The following reflects my experience of chaplains.

• Army Chaplain provides spiritual guidance
  
  The chaplain has seen the horrors of war and knows how much pain and suffering that it causes. During Desert Storm he was deployed with the 6th Transportation Battalion based in Fort Eustis, Va., to Iraq when he saw first hand the carnage war creates. Officers of the unit found a site where four Iraqi soldiers were killed in battle and asked the chaplain to have the remains recovered and given a decent burial.
   

And as for the statement, "If you tell Christians they can't tell others about their faith, then they can't exercise their Christian religion," that is religious imperialism.  There is a difference between telling someone about your faith if that person has asked you about it, and preaching to an unwilling listener.  I think Mr. Hostettler should read Miss Manners' column in the newspaper.  It's easily available to him in the Washington Post.

Oil prices hit nearly $60 a barrel

• Gasoline prices in the U.S. average about $2.13 a gallon, an increase of more than 40 percent over the past two years, but government data released last week showed that demand is up almost 3 percent from a year ago over the past four weeks at nearly 9.5 million barrels a day - a growth rate that surprised many analysts.

Y'know, if some people would turn off their cars in parking lots instead of sitting in them and either 'keeping warm' or 'keeping cool' maybe a barrel or two might be saved.  I really don't understand why these folks either don't go into the store, which is usually warmer or cooler than the car in which they're sitting, or (on warm days) roll down the windows if they must sit in the car.  My 'favorite' example of this sort of thing was seeing an RV running in the dead of winter as a man got out of it and went into the store.  I assume someone was still in the RV.  I was going into the store at the same time as he, but other than a passing feeling of 'that gives me the pip,' I put the idling RV out of my mind as I did my grocery shopping.  The spectacle didn't stay out of my mind, though, as when I came out of the grocery store, the RV still sat kitty-corner across the parking lines with exhaust coming out of the tailpipe.  It had idled for perhaps half an hour.

I know this would be anathema in the U.S., but in Germany it is illegal to idle your car in that fashion.  Clean air for everyone is considered slightly more important than one's own ability to turn gasoline into gases as one wishes.  It saves gasoline, too.

I also think about the price of fuel when I see carrots in the grocery store.  I know that carrots do best in sandy soil, but there are bulb-shaped carrots and the shorter Nantes-type that can be grown in heavier soil.  So why do I see carrots in Missouri stores that have come from California?  The Watsonville artichokes I understand, but carrots?

U.S. sees no urgency on climate

The causes of global climate change are complex and not yet understood, but the realization that we are conducting an unsupervised climate experiment that could have significant effect on world life shouldn't be dismissed.

• Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Invesigation sought on Schiavo collapse

Oh, for pity's sake . . . as if someone is going to remember something they didn't during the entire media circus.

• Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged gap in time between when her husband found her and called 911.

One of those sucking sounds you're hearing is taxpayer dollars going down the drain.

Death after Disney ride sparks call for federal review

• The death of a 4-year-old boy who lost consciousness on a Walt Disney World thrill ride Monday is still unexplained and has prompted a renewed call for federal monitoring of theme-park safety.

It is tragically sad that little Daudi Bamuwamye died on an amusement park ride and my sympathy goes out to his family. I hope the cause of his death is discovered.  Despite this, I think the effort to federally supervise amusement parks is misplaced.  Efforts, and money, to improve safety would be better spent on highways where the death rate per year is far higher than that of amusement park rides.

• According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), from 1997-2000 there was an average of 4.5 estimated fatalities per year at fixed-site and mobile amusement parks combined. Fatalities related to fixed-site amusement rides have averaged two annually over the last 25 years.

Point Alpha Prize

• Germany
  Three to be given prize
  Former US president George Bush, one-time Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and former German chancellor Helmut Kohl will be the first recipients of a new German prize for their efforts to end the Cold War, the prize's trustees said on Monday. The Point Alpha Prize is named for a Cold War-era US Army observation post on the heavily fortified border between East and West Germany, which is now a memorial.
  

You wouldn't notice the reference much unless you'd lived there.  The town name Geisa caught my eye on the World Watch page in the Kansas City Star.  It is under a cheeky photo showing Helmut Kohl and a nervous eagle flapping and jumping around on his arm.  The reason for Kohl's visit wasn't newsworthy, the nervous eagle provided a photo to fill an apparently empty space.

The last time I was in Geisa, and the only time, for that matter, was after the East German fence separating East Germany and West Germany came down.  Before that I could only see Geisa, or any other town, over a fence and across a mined death strip.

I hope Geisa looks better now than it did then.  Hats off to everyone who kept the peace.

PBS's funding is apparently on the chopping block.  I'm of two minds about it, and I've gone along with the pro-funding portion of my mind to the extent that I sent an email to my congressional representative.  The other part of my mind, the one that prefers less government spending, is uneasy, but considering that both parts of my mind prefer PBS programming to most programming on commercial stations, 'our' preference is clear to 'us.'

Perhaps 'we're' just snobs?  Or perhaps the other stuff is . . . not worth the time to watch it.

Messages concerning this topic showed up in today's digest from HEM Networking, one of the email lists sponsored by Home Education Magazine (but opinions expressed on the list are those of the list-members, not Official Home Education Magazine opinions).  Interesting parts of the discussion were:

• Noam Chomsky's books  Media Control (and I found an article also titled Media Control) and Manufacturing Consent.
• A Thomas Jefferson quotation, "The information of the people at large can alone make them safe."
• Bill Moyers speaking at the National
  Conference on Media Reform.  The title of his speech this year was Take Public Broadcasting Back and comments concerning modern day "media" (but not specifying the current cut in funding) are:
  
  We're seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable.
  
  . . .
  
  These "rules of the game" permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too often simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers, sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.
  
  . . .
  
  I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies as well as the Big Lie of the people in power. In no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence.
  
  Be sure to read to the end.

I got an email from one of my husband's long-ago IRL colleagues about how no one ever sings the fourth stanza of the American national anthem. The email quoted the lines as:

====================
Then conquer we must
When our cause is just [sic]
And this be our motto
“In God is our trust.”
====================

The piece contained in the email, credited to a Mr. Jim Moore and apparently published at http://etherzone.com/ , is titled "WHO STOLE THE LAST STANZA OF OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM?" I did a search in order to link to the article, but after 36 pages of Mr. Moore's columns, and a site-search for the title, I came up blank. So be it.

The chief argument in the column was that one rarely hears the fourth stanza because the word, "God" is in it. I hope what I paste is what Mr. Moore wrote, but since the snip from the fourth stanza was inaccurate (it should read, ". . . when our cause _it_ is just"), I can't swear to it. I really would link to the article, but I can't find it.

Allegedly from Mr. Moore:
=============================
To put this into context, it must be understood that the New World Order cabal, by its very nature, requires the elimination of national sovereignty, which for America automatically means the elimination of individual freedom. This conflicts directly with our Declaration of Independence which reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Now, it stands to reason that if some malevolent powers are out to take away our freedoms they must first remove all references to the Creator who gave us those freedoms. Therefore, it makes perfect sense why the word God is gradually disappearing from our communications.

The Gobalist crowd obviously can’t rewrite our National Anthem, but they can avoid all reference to the Almighty wherever it shows up.
===============================

I have a different take on the alleged rarity of the fourth stanza (it's not that rare I can remember singing it in public, but that's anecdotal, no?).

To quote from my reply:

Now, I'd say the eclipse of that stanza of the Star Spangled Banner might be more because of "conquer we must" rather than the word God. Since we now have the Dept. of Defense, rather than the Dept. of War, conquering other nations is, or used to be, frowned on. At least officially. "We" don't (or didn't) do that sort of thing.

And as for the worry about the elimination of "God" from public life (as if God could be excluded from anywhere that God didn't want to be excluded from), I look askance at the theocons (speaking of secret societies) . . .

http://www.nationalreview.com/27jan97/feature.html
========================================
" If there is a distinctively conservative theory of American nationhood, it isn't any sort of ``idea nation'' thesis, let alone a ``Christian nation'' idea, but rather the culturalist view of nationhood adumbrated by NR and in particular by John O'Sullivan (a Catholic, for those keeping score). Heilbrunn provides no evidence for his claim that the ``Christian nation'' thesis is central to ``American Catholic conservatism,'' because there isn't any. Perhaps R. J. Rushdoony or John Lofton believes in religious tests for office, but no prominent mainstream conservative intellectual does."
========================================

. . . and the folks in Kansas intent on teaching junk science in public schools rather than the kind of science that works regardless of whether it's put to use in a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist country.

I thanked the emailer for giving me blog-content.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/faraway_land/51468.html?view=186124#t186124
Let's see how the story develops.

I still haven't a clue how to get 'here' to type, but I do have a URL, so I guess I'm in business.

All this for playing around on a computer.